Microsoft’s Windows 7 team — and the IT channel — should take a close look at the Windows Server team’s open source strategy, which continues to impress The VAR Guy. The latest move: Microsoft has made SugarCRM (a popular open source CRM platform) available for free download from the Windows Web App Gallery Site. Here’s the scoop.
First, some background. SugarCRM in 2008 landed on The Open Source 50, which tracks the most promising open source partner programs. While most VARs are still getting to know SugarCRM, the company has been on Microsoft’s radar since 2006.
According to a SugarCRM spokeswoman:
SugarCRM and Microsoft have had a partnership since 2006. With a strong Windows user community, Sugar Community Edition has grown to be one of the most used CRM applications in the world due to its ease-of-use, open standards and ability to run across platforms. Sugar Community Edition is currently used by more than 55,000 companies and 600,000 users.
Now, that community might grow — thanks to SugarCRM’s inclusion in Microsoft’s Windows Web App Gallery.
No doubt, Microsoft has spent recent years embracing and certifying open source applications on Windows Server. The so-called “WAMP” strategy aims to have Windows replace Linux in the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.) software stack.
Windows 7 Team: Listen Up
It’s a smart strategy. In fact, the Windows 7 desktop team should leverage the same strategy, The VAR Guy believes.
Here’s the challenge: During the recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft actually promoted Corel — yes, that Corel — as a leading ISV writing Windows 7 applications. Yawn. No offense to Corel, but aren’t there any other exciting ISVs writing Windows desktop applications these days?
Sure, most application development has shifted to the web. But there are also hundreds — thousands? — of open source applications that run well on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and soon Windows 7. Heck, even the Microsoft Office team is talking up FireFox browser support for Office 2010′s hosted release (called Office Web).
Time for the Windows 7 team to do the same. Learn from the Windows Server-SugarCRM example. Talk up open source applications for Windows 7.
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SugarCRM…..
They are also listed as an RHX partner at Red Hat.
https://www.redhat.com/wapps/isvcatalog/company.html?company=10913
https://www.redhat.com/wapps/isvcatalog/product.html?product=141
Hey here’s a fun fact…
did you know that SugarCRM is no longer available in Canonical’s partner repository? After announcement in 2007 about availability for Ubuntu SugarCRM packages those packages were only made available for exactly one Ubuntu release…Dapper.
Microsoft probably trying to passivisation of Sugar CRM to make it considered as easy reachable and free in order to make commercial customers think twice and choose more professional solutions such as their prodcut, to leverage their Dynamics CRM sales.
Johnny S: Thanks for your perspective but in this case The VAR Guy respectfully disagrees with you. Think back to the 1990s; Microsoft was thrilled to have Lotus Notes and Oracle running on Windows NT Server — even if that meant competing with Lotus and Oracle in the applications space. Fast forward to the present, and the Windows Server team wants to remain central to the ISV community — whether the ISV is open or closed source.
At TechEd in Los Angeles this may, MS also disclosed full support for Safari and Firefox on the Exchange 2010 webmail. Again a classic opportunity for 1st and 2nd class citizens, which they have chosen not to use. They are getting more and more open.
The IIS team goes hard for having PHP run faster on IIS than on Apache, which also goes to show their commitment to getting part of the open source platform to run on the operating system.
In my personal opinion, Microsoft wants to create fertile grounds for open source applications, and thus, with free access to AD, .NET etc., make it easy for open source businesses to slip, and bind themselves to Windows. They can co-exist with *nix and open source, but make it soo much easier to bind them to windows